Category Archives: Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso – Ruling party wants to end presidential term limits

In Burkina Faso, the ruling party, the Congrès pour la démocratie et le progrès (Congress for Democracy and Progress – CDP), held its conference this weekend. Unsurprisingly, the party chose President Blaise Compaoré as its candidate for the presidential election scheduled for 21 November.

In addition, the party called for Art. 37 of the Constitution to be amended. This article limits the number of presidential mandates. It states that the president is elected for a five-year term and can be re-elected only once.

Compaoré has been in office since 1987 when he took power in a coup. The Burkinabé constitution was promulgated in 1991. At that time, the Constitution stated that the presidential terms was seven years and that a president could be re-elected once. In 1997 the term limit was abolished. In 2000 a five-year term was introduced and the two-term limit was reintroduced.

Compaoré was elected in 1991, 1998 and 2005. Given the most recent amendment was passed in 2000, the term limit is taken to apply from the first presidential election after that point. So, constitutionally, he is eligible to stand again in 2010, even though there is a two-term limit and even though he has been elected three times already.

And now, looking to 2015, the ruling party wants to abolish term limits!

 

When should we start to consider a country as semi-presidential?

One issue that comes up quite a bit in my research is when to begin counting a country as semi-presidential. I already alluded to this point in the posting on Turkey. Is Turkey now semi-presidential even though the current president was elected by parliament and even though he may be in office for five, or even seven years, until the first direct election takes place? I think we should count Turkey as semi-presidential now because the constitution has been changed and the definition used here relies solely on constitutional provisions. However, doing so means that we can have cases of semi-presidentialism where there has never been a direct presidential election.

Take Austria. In December 1928 Wilhelm Miklas was elected as president by parliament. In December 1929 the constitution was amended to include the direct election of the president. In 1934, the constitution was amended again and the direct election of the president was removed. In the meantime, democracy collapsed. For Polity, the last full year of democracy was 1932. So, the Austrian constitution was semi-presidential from 1929-34, but there was no direct presidential election in this period.

Another case is Burkina Faso. In 1970, a new semi-presidential constitution was adopted for the then Upper Volta. As far as I can tell, this system lasted until 1974. In this period there was no presidential election.

Another interesting example is Brazil from 1961-63. I will do a much fuller post about Brazil at some future date. For now, though, the presidential system was changed to a pure parliamentary system by a constitutional amendment in September 1961 only for the presidential system to be restored in January 1963. In this period there was no presidential election under the new system. So, for a short time Brazil had a directly elected president operating in a parliamentary constitution.

I count Brazil as parliamentary in this period in the same way that I count Austria and Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) as semi-presidential from 1929-34 and 1970-74 respectively. However, if one were to decide that a country only became semi-presidential at the point when the first direct presidential election occurred, then Austria and Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) would not be classed as semi-presidential and Brazil would be semi-presidential from 1961-63.